The state says a Hamilton County school district filed false attendance data in an effort to improve its state report card.

The Lockland School District in filed false data for 36 students during the 2010-2011 school year, leading to artificially higher state testing results for the district, the department said. Lockland's report card status - a district's overall performance record - has been lowered for 2011.

The case also has been referred to the department's Office of Professional Conduct to determine whether district employees are guilty of conduct unbecoming the teaching profession.

The results of the Lockland investigation come in the wake of recent claims that Columbus and Toledo schools retroactively altered student attendance records to improve their results on the state report card. The department is investigating both of those districts, and the Ohio auditor's office is also investigating the Columbus school district.

The filing of the false data by Lockland was not done to help students but to help adults, and that's a case of misplaced priorities, State Superintendent Stan Heffner said.

"Dishonest actions like these may inflate results but are unacceptable and will not be tolerated," Heffner said.

Officials at the Lockland district, which has about 600 students, did not immediately return calls Wednesday.

The department's investigation found that the 36 students were reported to the state as having left the district for another school district.

"But no other district reported receiving them, and it's our guess that the students never even knew they had been withdrawn," Charlton said.

The students were added back to the district's official roster a short time later, but the break in enrollment led to their test scores not being counted as part of the district's overall performance index, which is included in the report card.

The state has added those students to Lockland's 2011 report card calculations, dropping the district's rating from Effective to Continuous Improvement. The rating for Lockland Elementary School dropped from Continuous Improvement to Academic Watch, one step above the lowest academic ranking of Academic Emergency. The 36 students were scattered throughout the district's schools, but the high school and middle school report card ratings did not change, Charlton said.

Lockland could not provide any records to substantiate the claim that the students had gone to other districts, according to the state.

Asked whether the state was broadening its look into district data across the state, Charlton said that the department is working daily to enhance its system.

"We will not tolerate anybody who manipulates data to make their test scores or their attendance rates look better," he said. "We rely on school districts to honestly enter accurate information, and if we can't trust that anymore, we are going to have to be more vigilant in the future in verifying that data."